


it bit, flowed like water

by sungazer



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Confessions, F/M, Feelings Realization, Summer, Written Right After Season 3 Episode 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 11:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20947733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungazer/pseuds/sungazer
Summary: Gilbert confesses in the spring. Anne begins her last summer free in Avonlea.





	it bit, flowed like water

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i've sort of hodge-podged the show and book canons together, so i'm not sure how to tag this or even where exactly to place it on the timeline: the concept is roughly based on things from chapter 30 and while these events occur post whatever goes down in season 3, it doesn't really take ALL the events of season 3 into consideration since obviously i dont know what they are yet...a sort of schrodinger's season 3 if you will. i'm assuming s3e3 implied mary's death so that is referenced in here. dont think about any of it it too long and it should be fine  
2\. i forgot that marilla got the brooch/matthew's pocket watch back in season 2 SO JUST PRETEND THAT NEVER HAPPENED.  
2\. title from ana božičević's poem 'i stood outside...'

Gilbert frowned, his eyebrows drawing together. “You’ve truly never thought about it? With your wild imagination, not even once?”

“Gilbert Blythe,” Anne said, her skin hot as a cast iron skillet, “if you believe I could imagine myself in love with you, you’re an even bigger fool than I originally thought.” 

The truth is, of course, that Anne had certainly thought about it. Any girl even tangentially involved in a friend group with Ruby Gillis had been subjected to a great deal of lovelorn, ranting fantasies, so long and potently dramatic that even Anne couldn’t help but occasionally picture herself within them. The scenes were generally quite typical, Anne thought; blossoms falling from the trees in sheets of confetti, a kiss during the first rain of the summer. A love like a dog to the bone.

But she couldn’t admit that. Not now, and possibly not ever. Anne had pride to preserve, especially when it came to saving face with Gilbert Blythe. She didn’t hate him anymore, and honestly couldn’t be sure that she ever really did, but that wasn't enough to persuade her into courtship, besides it all. 

She liked Gilbert well enough; he had nice handwriting, a better head on his shoulders than any other boy in Avonlea, and even she couldn’t deny that he was handsome, but she certainly didn’t love him. In fact, sometimes all she wanted to do was break another slate over his head when their rivalry started cutting too close. That wasn’t love, at least not any kind Anne had ever heard of.

Gilbert shifted on his feet. Behind him, the schoolhouse framed his face like an empty canvas in which he was the only thing that had been painted. “If this is still about calling you carrots, Anne, you know how sorry I am. I thought you’d forgiven me ages ago. I didn’t know it’d vex you so terribly.”

“I have forgiven you,” Anne said, short. She looked at Gilbert’s shoes instead of his face, thinking that he really ought to tie neater knots in them for these muddy kinds of days. God forbid he lose a boot. Even now, the memory of his teasing made anger and humiliation rise up inside her like one of those geysers in the geology book she had borrowed from that awful boarder a winter ago, uncontrollable and blistering. Courage caught her, then, and she tilted her chin up, defiant. “Is it so unbelievable that a girl in Avonlea might not desire you?”

Gilbert only frowned further. Did something complicated with his eyebrows. “Anne—”

Anne picked up the basket she had brought her lunch in and whirled, stalking off towards Green Gables. She hoped Gilbert would at least have the courtesy to wait a while before he made his way home in the same direction, altogether thinking this turn of events had given the last day of school before summer a sour kind of ending, had her feeling all fizzly inside like bubbling yeast. She huffed a breath out through her nose, suppressing a strange laugh and shaking her head. The hair around her face came loose from her braids with the force of it.

It was simply ridiculous; courtship.

With Gilbert Blythe. It must have been a joke.

“Marilla,” Anne complained, “please. I look like a proper fool in all these dresses I’ve outgrown.”

Marilla sighed, eyeing her up and down. “I do suppose you’re right.”

Anne was still wearing the dresses the Cuthberts had unearthed for her when she first arrived at Green Gables all those years ago: fit for a plain young girl without much in the way of height or body. Now, they hit far too high above her knees, and were slightly tight across the chest and hips in a way that made it difficult to lift her arms, or really breathe properly. Anne had looked in the mirror one night after sitting in her bath so long the water went cold, and noted with delight that she was no longer the living replica of the wooden rulers kept in the storage closet in the schoolhouse, but now ever so slightly suggesting the slender, slight curves of the thin hourglass Miss Stacy sometimes used to test the students on their times tables. 

It was enough to make her feel incongruous when she left the house, and overly conscious of how she looked, what she was wearing. Not a girl, but not quite a woman, yet still wearing the costume of a child. It was worse when she went out with Diana, who was as comely as ever, and had a wardrobe that had Anne needing more meetings with the pastor to lecture her on jealousy. 

Marilla stepped forward, pinching Anne’s dress at the shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, relenting. “We can’t have you running around like this much longer, now can we?”

With that, Anne straightened her posture, pleased, and smiled, all teeth. “Oh, thank you Marilla. I’d stay and thank you longer, but Diana and I agreed to meet!”

Marilla rolled her eyes. “I don’t need you to talk my ear off, child. You can be sure the first thanks is enough.”

Anne ducked her head and hugged Marilla, one quick squeeze, then took off out the front door, down the porch, and towards the Haunted Woods. They’d taken to walking ‘round Avonlea together lately, arm in arm, chatting away. With the weather so lovely for summer, it was hardly a trial, and the sights always provided something new for conversation. Once, they spotted Charles Sloane getting quite the talking to from his mother in their yard, and laughed about it for a week.

Through the trees, she spotted Diana in a blue dress and white pinafore, waiting patiently outside the old ruins of the clubhouse.

“Diana!” Anne called, breaking into a run.

“Anne!” she replied, rising up on her toes as if that might grant a better view, “I see you everyday and still miss you yet.”

Anne crashed into her, grabbing Diana’s forearms. “I have the most pertinent news!” Diana’s eyebrows jumped to her hairline, waiting. “Marilla says I shall have new dresses now that I’ve outgrown these old ones. I can’t help but think I’ll be a new woman in a fortnight!”

“How wonderful!” Diana replied, grinning mad. “We’ll be a sight, strolling the streets of Avonlea.”

With that, they fell into step, heading back towards Green Gables to take the long way ‘round the back and past the barn, then along the fence, intending to head onwards to the Violet Vale and Willowmere. Jerry waved as they passed the barn, knees caked with dirt where he had knelt to repair the spoke of a wheel on their carriage.

“My mother won’t let up about finishing school,” Diana was saying, when Gilbert stood up from behind the fence a few meters down the way, one end of a freshly cut plank lifted up over his shoulder.

Anne stood still in her tracks. She hadn’t seen Gilbert in two weeks, since he confessed to her alone in the schoolyard and class let out for summer planting. With Bash running the farm, and more free time to shadow the doctor in Charlottetown, it hadn’t been difficult to avoid him. He looked—the same as always. Maybe a little less put together, thinking he’d be alone in the summer heat; collar falling open, his curls sticking up in a way suggested he’d repeatedly running a hand through them, trying to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

“Diana,” Gilbert greeted, tipping his head forward. He seemed to look at Anne’s knees, then her clavicle, then finally, her face. “Anne.”

He appeared to be in the middle of repairing a portion of fence between their properties which had a monthly habit of falling down. Matthew hardly ever remembered to get around to it, and Jerry couldn’t lift the logs high enough, so often it lay half collapsed in the tall grass, growing moss when it rained and the weather allowed enough humidity. 

Anne nodded her head politely. “Gilbert.”

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” said Diana, oblivious. Anne hadn’t told her what had happened between them at the end of spring, unable to speak of it without fear of imparting the wrong idea. When it came to Anne and Gilbert, Diana had a penchant for spinning things rather romantically, and Anne knew she would never hear the end of it if she was aware he had tried to court her.

Gilbert smiled without his teeth, then glanced at the sky. “Certainly. And better to fix this fence under the sun then wait for summer rains and mud.”

“Indeed,” said Diana. “I wish I could spend more of the season out with Anne, but if my mother has her way, I’ll be indoors day and night balancing books on my head and playing Bach’s minuets ‘til I die of starvation.”

Gilbert laughed. “She wouldn’t let you die. Faint, though? Absolutely.”

The conversation stuttered to a halt. Diana elbowed Anne where their arms were joined, off put by her uncharacteristic silence.

Anne planted her feet in the grass with surety, unable to stop herself. “How is your apprenticeship going?” 

“I set a broken bone all by myself just the other day. And I no longer feel the need to faint at the sight of a needle.”

“Going well, then,” Anne supplied.

Gilbert finally looked at her again. His eyes were the color of frosty shortgrass in late fall, splotches of faded green and light browns, pale in morning light. “I’d say. This week the doctor’s been teaching me about matters of the heart.”

Anne stiffened. Leave it to Gilbert Blythe to tease and be clever. He seemed to enjoy both Anne’s discomfort at falling upon the topic of his confession, and the fact that the subtext of the conversation was invisible to Diana completely. 

“I suppose you still have plenty to learn, then,” Anne said tightly. She took Diana by the arm more firmly. “We really must be going.”

As Anne led Diana away, the sound of Gilbert hammering nails intro old, dry wood echoed across the flat land loudly. Every other step, metal hit metal like a beat.

“What was that about?” said Diana curiously. Her eyes were bright and clear as she looked at Anne sideways. “What a strange look he gave to you.”

“Gilbert’s always been strange to me,” Anne said dismissively. “If he didn’t behave oddly, then that would be abnormal.”

Mrs. Barry had offered to host the summer ball, and cleared the furniture from the center of their main room to make room enough for a dance hall. Clusters of flowers meticulously picked from the back garden adorned the remaining tables and hung from the walls. Anne met Diana at the doorstep, intertwining their hands as they took dance cards from Mr. Barry and headed into the dimly lit ball. Anne had arrived fashionably late on purpose, always wishing to make a scene when she got to break out the blue puff sleeve dress. 

Most of their classmates had already entered the hall; she spotted Ruby and Tilly by an open window, Moody hovering by the drinks table, probably hoping to steal a glass undetected by anyone at all. Billy was chatting up Josie Pye, eyeing her dress in a way Anne didn’t like at all.

The nearest table offered up tiny lemon tarts. Anne and Diana both ate one in two bites, then traded dance cards to steal one another’s first slot. Miss Barry would be stricken if she knew, but she was busy greeting guests near the door, and would hopefully still be distracted by the time string music filled the house. 

Just as Anne bit into a second tart, Charlie Sloane appeared. “Can I sign your dance card?” he asked, without any greeting.

Anne crossed her arms, opening her mouth to refuse, but Diana was quick, and offered Anne’s card before she could even make a sound. He signed the second slot, penmanship wanting. Then he headed across the room towards Moody, who grinned at him.

“Diana!” Anne complained. “It’s terribly unkind to lead him on like that.”

“He’s convinced you hung the moon,” she replied, pushing her black hair back over her shoulder. “Do you really find him so unappealing? He thinks you the smartest girl in school.”

“I am the smartest girl in school,” Anne muttered. She had the marks and standing to prove it, too. “Besides. He’s a _ Sloane _.”

“I suppose you’re right. But he’s also Charlie.”

“What’s this about Charlie?” Gilbert said. Anne startled. She hadn’t seen him come in, arguing about all this Charlie business, but there he was, hands in his pockets, tie tucked into his vest layered beneath the suit it seemed he had finally finished growing into.

“Nothing about Charlie,” Anne said quickly, panicking. She searched for a way to derail the conversation, grabbing another dessert. “Would you like a lemon tart?”

“I’d like a dance,” Gilbert said.

“My dance card is full,” lied Anne, just as Diana squeezed her arm tightly and said serenely, “Anne would be happy to.”

Gilbert raised an eyebrow. Anne sighed, relenting. “You may have a dance.” 

Anne reluctantly offered her card up and watched closely as Gilbert signed it in the third slot, beneath Diana and Charlie. The other slots sat free.

He handed the card back, stare lingering too long, then disappeared into the bustle of the growing crowd, the curls parting the hair at the back of his head shaped exactly like the eye of a storm.

When Anne heard the quartet begin tuning their strings, she mostly felt a mix of dread and relief. Dancing with Diana was always fun; they could twirl and dip each other knowing that they would always be caught, and the steps were easy as they had joked around and done it hundreds of times before. Then Charlie came out from the woodworks, and the free feeling went out of her.

Maybe Anne has had too high of expectations, but dancing with boys never seemed to be quite the romantic affair it was in every fairy tale. Charlie was stiff as a board, seemingly incapable of making polite small talk, and only managed to look between his feet and Anne’s left shoulder. He wasn’t clumsy enough to step on her toes, but he always felt ever so slightly off rhythm. And Charlie was tall—too tall, almost—enough that it was a bit of a strain to hold the proper form for waltzing. Anne looked for Diana around Charlie’s shoulders, pleading with her eyes, but she was having a laugh with Moody MacPherson, who seemed unconcerned with the formality of the waltz.

When the strings faded to silence, the ballroom froze around Anne, and attendees started to applaud the quartet. Charlie nodded his head at her, awkward but polite, and hurried off towards the dessert table without a word further.

Though the summer night was beginning to cool, the ballroom was warm, and the heat seemed to cease from rising. The cross draft flowing from one open window to the other was strong enough to ruffle Anne’s hair and the ribbons on the dress of every girl in the room, but the air it moved was balmy, carrying the heady scent of flowers and herbs just outside in the Barry’s garden.

The room filled with quiet chatter and a bit of shuffling as partners changed again. Gilbert came from behind, tapping her on the shoulder. He moved a lock of her hair out of the way so as to not get caught in it.

That morning, Diana had come over and helped her fasten up rag curls, sitting around all day with half-wet hair until she finally untied the bows just before leaving. The curls lingered at the edges of Anne’s vision liked tied back curtains—at once she appreciated the practicality of her signature braids. Gilbert’s own hair was as messy as usual. Sebastian certainly couldn’t help him in that department, and without Mary, Anne supposed she was lucky he had a properly knotted tie and a suit free of wrinkles. It looked to be the same one he had worn to his father’s funeral.

Gilbert took her hand. He had a callus on the inner edge of his thumb from the bizarre way he held his pencils, and the roughness of it pressed against the border of Anne’s palm. Gilbert, too, was taller than her, but not so much as Charlie to be uncomfortable. Anne did her best to appear impassive as the rest of the string instruments swelled back in, counting steps in her head. 

The last time she’d been this close to Gilbert Blythe was when she’d hugged him outside his house the morning Dr. Ward had diagnosed Mary with sepsis. He’d been crying, then, and smelled faintly of smoked paprika when her face met his shoulder. If she remembered the broad span of his hands clutching at her back in the cold, the proximity of a waltz was more pleasant than unbearable.

At night, the only light was by fire, tall and elegant white candles dotted about the room. It was beautiful, as was everything the Barry’s did, but the warm nature of their glow only made her hair more red. Gilbert had a halo of orange around his head as they moved, the polished floor refracting colors back at him.

He wasn’t saying anything, just guiding her along with a hand curved around to the small of her back. She caught him looking at her sideways every time they so much as spun. 

The music again faded into silence. They stopped dancing, but Gilbert held on to her hand. She glanced around the room, looking for Diana, or Tilly, or even plain old Moody to save her now, but they were nowhere to be found, and the music took up a fourth time.

“I can sign again, if you like,” Gilbert said, “if you feel the formality matters.”

Anne wasn’t even sure at this point where her dance card was. Gilbert offered his leading hand again. Anne had no choice, really, but to take it. Even she knew it was him or get re-accosted by Charlie Sloane. They were surrounded by couples already dancing, standing around like two broken gears in an otherwise fine-tuned watch. At the very least, the challenge to her tolerance was more comfortable territory. It was more disconcerting when Gilbert wouldn’t rise to the bait at all.

Regardless. Two dances with Gilbert Blythe, one of which he hadn’t even properly asked for.

Ruby would be hysterical, but with Mrs. Lynde lurking somewhere in the ballroom, if Anne was so rude as to abandon him now, she’d likely never hear the end of it. Ruby could be consoled, she supposed, and she’d done it before. Would probably do it again. Rachel Lynde, however, could not be stopped.

Anne stuck her chin out, leveling Gilbert’s eyes. “So this is your game, then, is it, Gilbert Blythe?”

Gilbert squinted down at her as they turned. “What game might that be?”

“Making a ruin of my already precarious social life,” she replied. “Think of Ruby. Or Billy and Josie. Those two will mock me, and likely the both of us, about this forever.”

“Can’t friends dance?” Gilbert said. “I saw you earlier with Diana.”

“Friends don’t try and court each other,” Anne said. She stared at him hard, remembering the impromptu spelling bee on the last day of school, and the bout between them that went on so long that Miss Stacy was forced to declare a tie and no winner, in which Anne, during the early stages, had spelled _ ulterior. _ “And I never said we were friends, now, either.”

“We’re friendly,” Gilbert corrected, spinning her. He thought of Anne’s apology, in a winter that now seems hundreds of years away, smelling of tea in the cafe, how he told her it was water under the bridge, feeling that there was something he couldn’t say, but also knowing that before he left for the steamer, it was really the thing he needed to say most. He thought of her handwritten letters that somehow crossed an entire ocean to meet him, ink splatters up all the margins. When he caught her other hand again to stop her spinning like a top, he said, “you’re talented with the English language. It’s quite telling, the root of that word. Friendly.”

Anne stepped on his toes, lightly. Gilbert smiled, amused. He readjusted the placement of his hand on her waist, feeling the frilly lace lining at the fitted part of it, making an effort to pilot the dance again.

Anne changed form, suddenly leading, and spun Gilbert like a girl. He went easily, and she barked out a laugh, surprised by it. This, too, would have Mrs. Lynde in a fit, but Anne found she didn’t care so much. 

Anne walked slowly, careful, holding her forearm flat with the wrist skyward, two fingers pinching the long cut closed. Her blood was sticky and carried the vague scent of iron, lines of it dripping from the backs of her knuckles onto her boots.

She’d been picnicking with Diana in the Willowmere, sharing sandwiches and Anne’s latest attempt at raspberry scones. Diana had left first, fearing a scolding from her mother for being late for finishing lessons twice in a row, but Anne had stayed behind, observing the painted turtles lazing about in the pond, the water a shining blue mirror. Distracted, she had tripped while cleaning up, but only caught her fall after her arm had scraped down the sharp, hardened end of the downed branch of a willow tree. Maybe it would have been smart to use the sheet they were picnicking on to stay the wound, but it was too large to be practical, and caked with somewhat damp dirt, nonetheless.

Luckily, the walk back to Green Gables wasn’t terribly far, but the amount of blood and depth of the cut was growing concerning. Anne was too queasy to take a clear look, but it was deeper than the worst scrape she’d ever gotten before, and in all honesty she wasn’t sure what Marilla would even be able to do about it. She hurried past Violet Vale and crossed the wooden bridge over the creek.

Too fixated on keeping the blood of the white of her pinafore, she didn’t see Gilbert at the Blythe gate until he went white as a sheet and stepped into the road. “Anne?” he called, uneasy. “Are you alright?”

Anne held her bloody arm away from him. He was dressed properly, carrying his messenger bag, seemingly headed to the train station to go fulfill the duties of his apprenticeship in Charlottetown. “It’s fine,” she said, unsurely. “I’m headed to see Matthew and Marilla.”

Gilbert took another step closer, grabbing her by the elbow. He held it up into the sun to see the gash more clearly, gently pulling the two edges apart to measure how deep it was. The act was mostly fruitless, as it immediately welled up with blood again, but by Gilbert’s face, she knew. He didn’t seem put off by the red staining his hands, though it was hard to keep his grip in the wetness.

“What did you cut this on?” he asked seriously.

“An old willow branch,” she admitted. 

Gilbert’s eyes hardened. “We need to clean this, now. And it’s too deep to leave to healing on it’s own. You’ll need stitches. Fast.”

“I can hardly catch a train like this,” Anne said, growing afraid. And it was silly, but she wouldn’t dare waste the birthday money she had saved so long on—this.

Gilbert put his hand on the gate, leaving a sizable, bloody print. “I...I can do stitches,” he said. “Sebastian can help...it will be fine.”

Anne hesitated.

“I’ve been practicing,” Gilbert said quickly. 

“Practicing on what?”

“The soft apples that fall off the trees too early,” he admitted, scratching at the side of his neck. “Don’t worry—I always clean the tools after.”

Anne hesitated, still.

Gilbert’s face grew desperate. “The doctor leant me everything I’d need. Please, Anne, don’t be silly. You’ll have lost so much blood by the time Dr. Ward or anyone else can get here. And the risk of infection—”

The last sentence did her in. “Fine,” Anne huffed. She certainly couldn’t show up to Green Gables with a gash like this, or Marilla would lock her in the house and never let her out again.

She held the cut closed to follow Gilbert up the path to the house. Inside, she sat calmly at the kitchen table while Gilbert sterilized the tools from the borrowed suture kit in a boiling pot and Bash quickly wiped away the blood that hadn’t dried into a crust.

She watched in silence as Gilbert worked his way through the top of the laceration, at first alarmed by the look of the needle; curved like a fishing hook and a bit wider than she expected. He was steady handed, never once letting the suture slip from the needle driver, tying off each knot with toothed forceps tight enough to close the wound but not hurt.

It was taking too long. Bored, Anne looked around the room, spying into the kitchen, then the bedroom. A dark, expensive looking box lay closed atop a dresser amongst a layer of thin dust. “Stop moving,” Gilbert chided. Leaning in close to focus on stitching her forearm, Anne couldn’t see his face, only the crown of his head, the messy arrangement of his curls, and an inch down the back of his shirt where the collar strained away from the nape of his neck. When he breathed, she could feel it in the hairs on her arm, and it stung faintly in the rawness of her half open wound. 

She winced silently as the needle pierced her skin again, and the thread slid through, stinging. Perhaps now wasn’t really the time, but bothering Gilbert Blythe had always been a worthy pastime. 

“What’s in that box?” Anne said. 

Gilbert startled, tugging too hard on the existing stitches.

Anne flinched. “Ow,” she complained.

Gilbert straightened, glancing in the direction of the bedroom. He stared for a moment, then went back to the stitching. “Nothing’s in it,” he said.

“Why keep an empty box? Seems awfully wasteful to me.”

“There _ was _something in it,” Gilbert said. If Anne squinted, she could imagine that Gilbert was stitching a floral design into a pillow, pulling the needle and thread through the canvas with incredible precision. “Before. Just not anymore.” 

“Well, what?”

“My father’s medal,” he said. “From his time in the army.” Another row of stitches was complete.

“Where is it now, then?”

Gilbert ducked his head further, shoulders drooping. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Elijah—that’s Mary’s eldest son, ran off with it and a whole lot of other things of my father’s when he was allowed to stay here. He likely pawned it off.”

Anne frowned, sucking in air through her teeth as the last pass of the needle went through her skin. “Gilbert,” she said softly. “That’s horrid.” He cut the thread, and worked a few knots into it, her skin tugging a little ghoulishly at the strain.

“There are worse things in life,” Gilbert said, sitting up to observe his handiwork in the candlelight. The orange haze emanating from the tiny wick had made Anne’s hair even more fiery than it was in it’s own right, each freckle dotting her skin like a dark, inverted star. “Though you don’t need me to tell you that.” He stood, wet a rag, and then wiped the half dried blood away with the cold water. 

“Right,” Anne replied faintly. 

Gilbert, holding her by the wrist, examined the sutures one last time. “If you like, you could take the train to Charlottetown and Dr. Ward could have a proper look at this.”

Anne rolled her eyes, the pain now dull and faintly pulsing. “Want to show off your work, don’t you?”

Gilbert laughed lightly. “You always think the worst of me. I just didn’t think you’d trust me with this, that’s all.” He smiled at her, then seemed to suddenly become aware of himself. He let go of her arm. “You’ll want to redress and wash the area daily.”

Anne lifted an eyebrow defiantly. “I know the pillars of first aid, Gilbert.”

“If you won’t see the doctor, I’ll have to remove the sutures myself in about two weeks.”

“I’d have to pay him,” Anne said. “And you’re free.”

Gilbert’s knees knocked against her own, a combination of the jostling train and the height he had acquired in the past few months. 

“Marilla’s set you loose again?” Gilbert said amiably. 

“I’ve been allowed restricted travel,” Anne said primly. Marilla had cut her off from the world for half the school year, infuriated by Anne’s repetitive, pan-island blunders.

“Still on that deeply meaningful and personal journey of yours?” Gilbert asked. Anne winced, remembering her tone when she’d said that to him. She could hardly believe he still remembered the wording, but it must have been memorable by how much it stung. He had never even let her apologize.

“Perhaps,” Anne replied. “I thought I might check the plot records at the cemetery, but today seems too beautiful for something so grim. I still have birthday money from Marilla—and in Charlottetown the shopping is so fine.”

She’d hoarded the fifty cent piece Marilla had given her for her sixteenth year, keeping it secure in the deep pocket of her pinafore for months on months on months. She intended to peruse the dress shops on the main street, indulge in a pastry, and even scour the shelves of the local pawn shop, secretly hoping to rediscover the amethyst brooch she had once sold to save Green Gables. It was the thing she wanted most, imagining Marilla’s face when she produced it from her basket, something they could share, a piece of the past she could bring back to life. Anne had tried not to get her hopes up, sure that something so lovely would have been pawned off long ago, but she just couldn’t help herself. She would search ‘til the train horns blew. 

Gilbert set his tan bag at his feet, the books thumping against the floor, accompanied by the quiet clang of something metal.

“Is that the suture kit in there?” Anne asked curiously.

“Yes,” Gilbert said, looking a little bit surprised. “But don’t worry. I’ve kept the shortbent scissors back home for your forearm.”

“I’m sure kitchen shears would have sufficed.” The train tracks hitched, knocking their knees together again.

“I wouldn’t allow it,” Gilbert said sternly. “It’d be unsanitary, and I’d risk straining the freshly healed wound with such big tools.”

Anne feigned an equal seriousness. “Of course, Dr. Blythe.”

Gilbert laughed, then settled fully into his seat, pulling a book from the depths of his bag and flipping through it the rest of the way. Even upside down, it looked to be in depth descriptions of anatomy, and Anne suddenly felt silly for not having brought something to read herself. Like he might be leaving her behind.

When the whistle blew and the car rolled into the station, they stood. Gilbert waved goodbye.

His shirt was green, collarless. When he bent to lift his bag from the ground, the dip between his shoulder blades became a valley with rolling hills.

Anne cleared her head with a shake. She had better things to think about.

Anne met Cole Mackenzie out in the yard of Aunt Josephine’s house, letting him lift her off the ground in a tight, welcoming hug. She’d departed from Gilbert at the train station, heading in opposite directions; him toward Dr. Ward’s, her towards the residential area just outside of town.

“It’s been years,” Cole said, setting her back on her feet. “Centuries, even.”

Truthfully, it had only been a few weeks; she’d last seen Cole a bit before school let out for the summer season, invited out by Aunt Josephine with Diana to dinner at the house. Anne still missed the days when they shared time at the same school, but she couldn’t complain, knowing how much happier Cole had been after leaving sad old Avonlea. 

“Well,” Anne said, slyly producing the fifty cent piece from her pocket, holding it reverently between two fingers. “I’m on a mission. For a secret treasure.”

Cole grinned, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her back towards town. Anne flinched slightly at the dull ache of her sutures beneath his grip, but took two flighty steps and caught up with him enough that he let go.

The pawn shop was familiar enough, and the owner recognized her by her red hair. He seemed a bit more referential to Cole, who was dressed better, a boy, and associated with the beloved Aunt Josephine, but Anne took it in stride as well as she could, trying to use it to her advantage. She had Cole relay the make, material, and design of Marilla’s brooch to the man, hoping he might take his requests more seriously, but the owner just made a face, annoyed, and said, “Child, do you really think I’m acquainted with every godforsaken object that passes into this shop here?”

“Um,” Cole said awkwardly. “No. Sir.”

The man went back to reading the newspaper, peering down at the text over the frames of his glasses. “You’re free to look for it on your own,” he said, waving a hand to dismiss them. As Anne and Cole turned to split up and start their search of the stock, he snapped his fingers at them. “You break it, you buy it,” he said sternly. Anne nodded stiffly and squatted down, hoping the old flooring wouldn’t give her a splinter through the cotton of her stockings, and began searching the nearest shelf.

Cole made a face at her from the other side of the room, impersonating the way the shopkeeper shoved his glasses back up the slope of his nose, wagging a scolding finger about.

The search proved mostly fruitless. They had only covered half the store, as the shelves were overcrowded to begin with, and Anne had promised Marilla she’d be home to help put dinner on. Having only recently been freed from some of Marilla’s most constrictive rules, Anne was not inclined to break her curfew tonight. She told Cole as much. He strode out the door with purpose, but Anne lingered inside another minute longer. She had been allowed too much time to think, with all the combing, and her mind wandered to John Blythe’s stolen goods.

She crept up to the register, rapping her knuckles against the counter’s dark wood. The shopkeeper squinted at her. 

“Sorry to bother you again, sir,” Anne said, anticipating his irritation already, “but I was wondering if you remembered being sold any...medallions? Or something like...a badge of a kind of honor, anything of that sort?”

The shopkeeper looked at her, her face closed but hopeful. “Child, I told you once before; there is too much here for me to even know.” That seemed a stretch—Anne had sold things to this man before, and she remembered that he took it all down in a record book, but he didn’t seem obliged to help her whether or not she brought that up, anyway. It was no matter, besides; she had a train to catch, and there were plenty more days left of summer to search.

She caught up to Cole in the road, and stepped in a stray puddle made by carriage wheels and hoofbeats. The train station came into sight. Anne searched herself for her ticket, momentarily thinking she had somehow lost it, before Cole reminded her it was tucked inside the cover of the notebook left in the bottom of her bag. On the platform, the incoming train blew Anne’s loose hairs sideways. The cover of noise made her brave, even if it was brief.

“Cole,” she said, turning to face him, tugging at the end of her braid. “I...Gilbert asked to court me.”

Cole’s face twisted into a moment of shock, then into a grin. “So I did foresee the future at this very train station all those months ago.”

Anne remembered it, then, suddenly; Cole leaning over to whisper _ you know Gilbert likes you, right? _after they had hopped the freights to Charlottetown. Watching Gilbert walk away, she had thought it ridiculous, furrowing her brow and disagreeing hotly. What had Cole seen that she had missed?

“I said no, of course,” Anne added at the sight of Cole’s smiling, smug face.

Cole’s mouth dropped open. “You refused him? Why?”

Anne threw her hands up. “Why are you so surprised? I never felt that way about Gilbert. You know I haven’t.”

Cole shoved his hands deep into his pockets, shrugging. People crowding around the steps up to the train car bumped Anne and didn’t apologize. “I just always thought that...well it always seemed like, you claimed to hate him, yes, but when I was in Avonlea it seemed you missed him more than ever. You’ve read more literature about love than me, but isn’t that what the poets say? When you notice someone’s absence, and you hate the lack of them the most out of anything. More, even, in scale, than you liked their presence?”

“I didn’t miss him,” Anne said, perturbed. A lie. She had admitted as much to Gilbert in the snow before he left for the steamer, Trinidad. She had told him she was just bored at school, lacking motivation without a proper rival, which was only part of the truth, presented as if it was all of it.

She had missed his eyes boring into the back of her head all day in the schoolhouse, and the way it only made her focus more, the thrill of real competition always driving her. She missed the fancy fish hooks at the bottom of Gilbert’s capital G’s when Mr. Phillips made him write on the board when he got insolent and prone to disagree. Had wondered if, were the Earth entirely flat, she would be able to see the steamboat he was working on, its massive hull made into a tiny dot by the sheer distance, floating out on the Atlantic horizon, past Nova Scotia and the Cape Breton shorelines.

Cole held his hands up in defeat. “Alright. You didn’t miss him. But you _ are _friends.”

Anne crossed her arms, slightly piqued at the revelation. Cole was right; she and Gilbert _ were _ friends—denying it any longer was a petty side effect of Anne’s stubbornness and pride—but he was still the one who’d gone and muddled it all up, then, with his awful confession.

The train was threatening to pull out of the station, ground rumbling beneath Anne’s feet. She boarded, the last passenger left on the platform, and sat at the window to wave to Cole. She couldn’t find much to say in reply to his words, earlier, and instead pushed up half her window, leaned out and yelled, “I’ll write!”

The Blythe apple orchard was green and in full bloom, trunks lined up in mesmerizingly straight rows, having the whimsical look of something Anne wanted to run down for acres and acres. Gilbert’s months of absence a year or so ago hadn’t deterred their growth at all, as the trees never needed much tending to begin with, and the growing season had been kind and long.

Anne eyed Gilbert from her peripheral vision. Marilla had sent her over to collect a few fruits for a pie dish, and he had led her out behind the house to take her pick. As Gilbert relaxed beneath the tree, peeling an apple of his own with a pocket knife, Anne only grew more irritated. How come he got to feel set free, having laid out his intentions in the spring, yet she was the one who could barely cope with it all, when the feelings were never hers to begin with?

She plucked an apple from a low hanging branch, setting it in her basket and finally taking a full look at Gilbert. “Would you take it back?” she said suddenly.

“What, the apple?”

“No,” Anne said fiercely. “What you said. On the last day of spring.”

He stood, nearly hitting his head on the branches. “Why would I take it back? That would be...you can’t go putting apples back on the trees.”

“Because I don’t understand how you could just go ahead and ruin what we had!”

Gilbert’s mouth pressed into a tight line. He looked at his hands, shucking off the last bit of the fruit’s skin until it fell to the ground. His eyes met hers again, timid and darting away. “I thought you felt how I felt,” Gilbert said awkwardly. “We were friends, at least. It didn’t seem so outlandish to imagine something more.”

“We’re rivals,” Anne sputtered. “All we do is argue!”

Gilbert bit into his apple, and looked down the long row of trees. “I liked the fighting,” he said, bold, but still unable to level her gaze.

Anne furrowed her brows, neck still strained as she searched upward for the perfectly ripened reddish-pink of a melba. The anger had gone out of her. “How can you like fighting?”

“It made me feel fiery inside,” Gilbert said. “You know, passion is a kind of love, too. I suppose it was silly of me to think you felt the same, when I knew all about your ideals of romance.”

That made Anne flush. “You must think my standards rather frivolous,” she said, brushing aside another armful of leaves, a few detaching from the branches and floating down.

“A little,” he said. When Anne turned and glared at him he just smiled, reaching above her and picking the apple she’d been trying to locate down, offering it, palm skyward. 

“You’re incorrigible,” she said. Anne snatched the apple from him, annoyed again, and rubbed her thumb along it’s skin until the wax shined. “And I can hardly believe the feelings you claimed to have for me were true, anyways. If it was a genuine, exceptional love, of which only the most pure and tragic intentions could persuade me into courtship, remaining only friends would be unbearable for you.”

Gilbert smiled, nicking off another apple slice. “Anne Shirely-Cuthbert,” he said. “It’s an honor to be friends with you. Yours was the only kindness I’ve ever had to earn.”

Sebastian answered the door. “Anne!” he said, his face rounding out with his grinning. “I won’t flatter myself thinking you’ve come this way for me. Come inside and wait a minute—I’ll go and get the boy Blythe.”

“Thank you,” Anne said. Sebastian was likely the only person in Avonlea who could match her overall enthusiasm for life, and he whistled to himself as he disappeared deeper into the house, his footsteps trailing up the stairs. 

A minute later, Gilbert descended the stairs himself, pulling a suspender back up over his shoulder as he skipped over the last two steps. 

Anne held up her arm. “It’s been two weeks,” she said. The cut had healed well enough, first with a hideous scab, then with a bumpy, discolored patch of scar tissue, a bit stiff like half-fired clay, surface rough as a corn husk.

Gilbert looked at it a moment, then headed into the kitchen. “I’ll just need to sterilize everything beforehand,” he said, pulling a pot from the shelf and setting the water up to heat. Anne sat in a wooden chair as Gilbert searched for the shortbent scissors and tweezers he had intentionally kept behind. When the water began to boil, he dropped them in with a metallic clang.

Gilbert stood, stiffly, watching the bubbles roll. He glanced at her. “Would you like some tea?” he said suddenly.

“From what pot,” said Anne.

Gilbert grimaced, then laughed. “Right.”

He drained the pot in the sink and removed the tools, taking more supplies out from his messenger bag; antiseptic solution, a cotton roll. The metal was still hot when it touched her. Gilbert pulled his chair up, had them sitting close enough to interlock their knees, arm wrist up on the very edge of the table.

He was quiet as he worked, even more focused than he was during their Queens study sessions after school, squinting to see the fine thread a little better. Anne almost laughed, imagining him soon needing a pair of reading glasses like Marilla.

Upstairs, Delphine began to cry, muffled and distant.

Anne shifted in her seat. “Why do you want to be a doctor, anyway?”

“You told me you wanted to be a teacher, right?” Gilbert said. Anne nodded. “Because Miss Stacy made a meaningful difference in your life. She was someone you needed...and you wanted to be that person for someone else, one day.” Anne nodded again. Gilbert cut the first stitch with the shortbent scissors, tweezers slowly easing the thread out from her arm. “When I was taking care of my father...what I needed was a doctor. Maybe more than a doctor. I needed someone to tell me what to do and how to do it, how to help him and why. How to know when he was going to die. How to make it easier on him. When Mary got sepsis, I was the one who had to tell Bash that he couldn’t run—that you have to stay, because the thing that holds a loved one to the dying is that you have no choice. If there wasn’t me, there wasn’t anyone.” Gilbert snipped another suture, twisting the metal tweezers artfully so as to not catch her skin on the knot. “I don't want to leave the sick to their dying anymore. I want to save someone’s dad. My best friend’s wife. Deliver babies that should have died.” He smiled, briefly, meeting Anne’s eye. “Help kids with croup last through the night.”

Anne had been hoping he'd have something stupid or arrogant to say. Now she just felt sad and silly. “If I had been old enough,” she said softly. “I wonder if I would have been able to bear it. Staying, I mean. When my parents...”

Gilbert dipped the tweezers in the solution he had made with balsam resin from a dark glass vial and ethanol, its smell sharp and pungent in the nose. “I don’t know,” he said. Another cut, another pull on the sutures. “Sometimes, with my dad, I would just stand outside the house for hours. I couldn’t even open the door. Near the end, he had this sour kind of smell about him, like parts of him weren’t even alive anymore. Now I know I was just running from someone that needed me, and I wish I had been stronger. Because nobody wants to be alone.”

Anne was leaned over to watch Gilbert remove the stitches. She had too frail a heart to want to pursue medicine herself, but the process alone was interesting enough. Her hair hung down around her like autumn weeping willow boughs. 

Gilbert chanced a glance up. Anne’s eyelashes, suddenly so close, were straight but dark. She had three freckles clustered so close together next to an eye that it almost became a mole. There was a tiny fleck of brown in one blue eye; so light it was almost gold. _ There’s gold in Avonlea, _he thought, remembering how it looked in her handwriting, skin flushing. Her gaze fell upon him.

Stray drops of the balsam solution ran down either side of Anne’s arm, forgotten and strangely cold. Anne stared at him, realizing three things at once; first, that the misplaced hatred and anger she had been feeling since the day she cracked a slate over Gilbert’s skull was really just frustration when you split it open and looked at it under the light. Second, she wanted him to close the rest of the distance and catch her mouth with his own, for all her talk of kissing boys on her own accord, she wished he would be bold enough to do it himself. And third, perhaps worst of all, she could not turn away from him.

Gilbert leaned in a centimeter, then away, his eyes jumping to her mouth and away again, sitting up quickly enough that the breeze he created flung the thread from the removed sutures across the table.

Out the window, the shadows were growing long. Anne rolled her sleeve back down. She could hardly say a thing, stunned and speechless. This love, like all living things, had grown from the root. The very ground beneath her was made up of it’s shoots.

Gilbert stood, brushing his hands down the front of his shirt, placing the scissors back in the boiling water.

“Thank you,” Anne said, lingering at the door. She felt as though she had somehow come down with the first landborne case of sea legs, the intensity of her desire overwhelming her, reconnecting with a part of herself she’d thought she’d turned off forever.

It was nothing like what she’d guessed love would be in the hundreds of stories she’d written. She felt like the walls of the clubhouse falling away from her, the fox every boy in Avonlea had taken a lucky shot at a winter ago. The door closed behind her as she left, crossing straight across the freshly tilled fields.

Her heart swung open like a switchblade.

Winnifred greeted her with a bright smile as she burst into Dr. Ward’s offices. 

“Is Gilbert here?” Anne asked in a rush.

Winnifred shook her head, two blonde curls falling across her forehead. “Dr. Ward sent him home early a few hours ago—he only had one appointment today, and in all honesty, the poor boy seemed off. Dear, is something wrong?”

“No,” Anne said, surprised it wasn’t a lie. She clutched the door. “Thank you anyways! Bye!”

Anne had to help unload a cart on the main street to earn enough coin for the train ticket back, having nearly thrown all her money at the pawn shopkeeper so that he couldn’t argue with her before she got out. The ride itself seemed to take entire ages, she bounced her knee and redid her braids one by one. She was the first person out of the car and onto the platform. She walked through town, trying to avoid drawing attention to herself, but as soon as it was behind her, she broke into a run.

There was really no need to—it wasn’t like Gilbert Blythe was going anywhere—but the running felt...important. Necessary. The section of fence Gilbert had fixed earlier in the summer had fallen down again, and she took the shortcut over it. Sebastian answered the door and directed her around to the back of the house.

Gilbert was pruning the younger apple tree saplings planted at the front of the orchard, cutting away diseased or dying leaves. The shadows were growing miles long, and the trail of downed branches beneath every trunk behind him made Anne think he had been doing this for a while now.

She took a step forward, and a twig beneath her heel snapped. Gilbert startled, looking up.

“Anne?”

Anne was wordless. Just clear out of vocabulary, devoid of a single syllable. She reached into the front pocket of her pinafore, producing the medallion, still wrapped in crinkling, semi translucent paper. Gilbert bent over to set the pruning shears against the tree trunk. Anne’s heart was beating double time, both from the exertion and the horrifying thrill of trying to set things right. She grabbed Gilbert’s hand. Turned it over, palm up. Set her gift within it.

“What—” Gilbert started, but Anne just pressed it towards him harder, shaking her head, the hand holding the medal pressed against his sternum, just below his heart. 

Anne was red. Perhaps the message was unclear, but at the very least she knew what she meant. When Gilbert stared at her, frozen himself, he noticed and seemed to blush. His ears went pink beneath his curls as he looked down at the packet before him. He unwrapped it carefully and slowly, never ripping the paper in a single spot, turning it over and over until John Blythe’s medal lay flat in his palm in the center of an offwhite sheet. On his other hand, his fingers twitched. 

“I searched the pawn shop in Charlottetown for hours,” Anne blurted, all the lost words seemingly finding her at once. “If it was somewhere nearby, I just couldn’t bear it. I’ve badgered the shopkeeper—who is a very rude man, by the way, truly it seems no one ever offered to teach him the most basic of manners—for the entire summer to find it, so much I fear I’ve been banned from the property altogether. I made him dig out the records and read every line. I just knew it had to be there. I just knew it. And I couldn’t bear you losing it forever.” Gilbert was still staring at the medal. Anne thought hard, unable to tell if he was really understanding it. “And I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you so terribly. I was sometimes unkind. I want to take back what I said in spring, at the schoolhouse. It wasn’t right. And...I...well, Gilbert, I—”

Gilbert leaned down and kissed her. One hand on her elbow. 

“Anne,” he said lowly. He tasted of overripe crab apples, tart and sweet.

In the sky, the sun was melting into the horizon like a freshly cracked egg. Marilla would be worried sick. She’d spent all day hunting the shelves in the old pawn shop, the dust falling down around her like snow, and had promised to be home by dinnertime. She was already running late.

“I should really go,” Anne said. Gilbert grabbed her face with both hands and kissed her again, the medallion cold against her cheek. At once she understood the way Gilbert looked that day when she rejected him; when love was there, the friendship was hardly enough. And yet she would have bore it for a lifetime if it was as much as she could have. The love was a gaping hole in the heart, a pit the size of the ocean, vast and waiting to swallow her.

Beyond the orchard, the tree line devoured the sun in a slow, final bite.

In the half-dark, Gilbert was almost blue. As if to say; this, too, will swallow you. 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i used an inflation calculator to find out that anne's 50 cents from marilla would be worth around 10-13 canadian dollars today (though i don't know how accurate that truly is). i wont pretend to understand the pricing system of canadian pawn shops in the late 1800s but i figure she could maybe get john blythe's medal back for that much?? another thing to not think too hard about.  
2\. are summer balls a thing??? who knows! i did my best to find out on google but the internet gave me nothing so i decided to take some liberties once again  
3\. i wrote this in a fugue state over the weekend im so sorry for how many errors/typos there probably are i will come and fix them later


End file.
